Video

Complete version of the tarana by the Lahore-based poet Jagan Nath Azad, who wrote this anthem, Pakistan’s first, reportedly at the request of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (see ‘Bring back Jagganath Azad’s Pakistan anthem‘). Thanks to his son Chander K. Azad in Jammu for sending the complete naz’m (obtained and scanned from his sister Pramilla Taylor’s archives in the U.K.). I believe this is the first time since 1947 that it is being made public.

Jagan Nath Azad’s Pakistan ‘Tarana’ – courtesy his son Chandar K. Azad in Jammu and daughter Promilla Taylor in the UK. (Thanks to Tanveer Sheikh for the jpeg conversion)

Transliteration and translation follow, by people who are coincidentally both Lahoris too, like Azad Aye sar zameen-i-Pak (transliteration by Asad Jamal)

The grains of your soil are glowing today
Brighter than the stars and the galaxy
Awe-struck is the enemy by your will-power
Open wounds are sewn, we’ve found a cure
O, Land of the Pure…

New paths of progress, we resolve to tread
Proudly, our nation stands with a high head
Our flag is aflutter above the moon and the stars
As planets look up to us be it Mercury or Mars
No harm will now come from anywhere, for sure
O, Land of the Pure…

The nation has tasted success at last
Now freedom struggle is a thing of the past
The wealth of our country knows no bounds
For us are its benefits and bounty all around
Of East and West, we have no fear
O, Land of the Pure…

Change has become the order of the day
No-one is a slave in the nation today
On the road to progress, we’re swiftly going along
Independent and fortunate, happy as a song
Gloomy winds are gone, sweet freedom’s in the air
O, Land of the Pure…

The grains of your soil are glowing today
Brighter than the stars and the Milky Way

Translator’s Note by Shoaib Mir: I feel privileged to have translated this historic document that I suspect is not even part of our national archives. It’s as if I have forged a personal link with the Quaid e Azam! Not literal, my translation – certainly not the best one can have – is an honest attempt to capture the spirit of the original text which is in rich Urdu/Persian idiom. I thought it was necessary to use my creative license to rhyme in order to match the beauty and grandeur of the original text the best I could.

It was broadcast by Radio Pakistan Lahore on Aug 14, 1947 apparently, and was broadcast more than once. But they don’t seem to have any record of it (last I asked). People who are interested should write to Radio Pakistan and ask them to find it.

I haven’t found anything in writing explaining why Azad’s anthem was discarded, but according to the narrative of events in my original article, also on this blog, it went into disuse in 1948. There was a gap of six years before 1954 when the National Athem Committee accepted Jullandri’s anthem (he was a member of the NAC but I guess the term ‘conflict of interest’ wasn’t brought up).https://beenasarwar.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/bring-back-jagannath-azads-anthem/

[…] the verses known to a number of historians. The complete text though has finally been obtained by Beena Sarwar through Azad's son Chander K. Azad who resides in Jammu. A nice enough of translation has been […]

I’m seriously grateful to you for bringing this out of the dustbin of history. Most history buffs like me are lazy as well and never pursued the issue further but you put in your effort and I’m grateful to you for this.

A better translation of kehkashan is galaxy. Milky Way isn’t the proper word. Nit picking, but I’m trying to improve the translation only.

Beena and Shahid,
On “Milky Way isn’t the proper word”, let me inform both of you that Milky Way is the term used for the specific galaxy in which our Solar System is located. And it is one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.

It’s just as well that Milky Way also beautifully rhymes with “today” which is so very important to set the flow of the anthem right in the first two lines. However, if the idea is to “improve the translation” by “nit picking’, and being literal, there may be room for wholesale changes that I leave to everyone and the blogger.

Beautiful, it truly reflects the vision of our Quaid. He wanted to make Pakistan a true modern democratic state ,where every religion was respected and was considered as an individual affair.With state not interfering in it. That’s why he asked Prof Azad a Hindu poet to write the national Anthem. He also made a non Muslim as Head of the constituent assembly (Speaker) Mr.J.N. Mandal.
He was truly a visionary leader, and wanted a modern and progressive Pakistan, unlike our leaders of today.
Daniyal.
Ireland

As someone who fundamentally believes in separation of religion and state I viscerally like the idea that a Hindu may have been asked by the secular founder of the nation to write the country’s anthem. Also, I like Jagan Nath Azad’s heartfelt poem, particularly as it was written at a time of such communal madness.

However, I want to inject a note of skepticism. In his writings Jagan Nath Azad mentioned penning this poem and its broadcast from Radio Pakistan, Lahore but himself never seems to have claimed in his writings that Jinnah asked him to write it as a national anthem. He was based in Lahore at the time and Jinnah arrived and was in Karachi on August 14th/15th. How and when they would have communicated on this topic is not clear. It would be good to find some documentary or other evidence for that claim before passing something on as fact just because we want to believe it.

Secondly, liking particular poetry and music is up to individual taste and I find this entire debate of Hafeez Jallundhari’s anthem as Persian and/or synthetic and Azad’s poem as natural rather silly. The problem is that the Pakistani educated class simply doesn’t know good Urdu and nothing in the national anthem or Azad’s poetry is too difficult for those who know the language (in fact Azad’s patriotic anthem has a few far more obscure words). For those who don’t they are both difficult so just because Hafeez Jallundhari is seen as right wing and not likable he seems to now get attacked for reasons good and bad. Azad should be rightly praised and given credit for a work from the heart but denigrating the current anthem should not be a natural corollary. I personally happen to like the current national anthem but its almost beside the point.

Full disclosure: my father who is a retired professor was friendly with Hafeez Jallundhari and even I have met him as a child. I don’t think that jaundices my opinion but it may.

Azad writes in his book ‘AnkheiN TarastiaN HaiN’ (1981) that he was asked by Jinnah (via someone else) to write this tarana, but never claimed to have met Mr Jinnah. Zaheda Hina refers to this in her article posted on this blog.

[…] Back in June 2009 I had first written by Prof. Jagan Nath Azad, who had been asked by the Quaid, Mr. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to write the very first national anthem of Pakistan. Prof. Azad’s Aé sarzameené paak was, in fact, Pakistan’s first national anthem, until it was later replaced by the current anthem. Prof. Jagan Nath Azad, a Punjabi Hindu, later migrated to India but remained a staunch advocate of Indo-Pakistan friendship (see videos here). At that point I had not been able to find a copy of the full tarana and since then I as well as other readers have been eagerly looking for a copy. Today, reader Adil Mulki found one here and I am delighted to share it with our readers (thanks also to Heritage Online where it was posted; Reader Shahid now alerts me that thanks are also due to ATP friend Beena Sarwar who originally uncovered this via Prof. Azad’s son Chander K. Azad, here): […]

1. Main issue is that 71 yrs old Jinnah, with little knowledge of Urdu, had known 29 years old Azad?
2. He, the constitutionalist, forced this as “national” anthem without approval of assembly (while the national flag received this approval in assembly)?
3. During entire one year of Jinnah’s post 1947 life (ending in 1948), the national anthem was never captured anywhere in records.

Maybe the sole “historian” Ms. Beena Sarwar needs to scrutinize her history credentials.

Having said this all, Islamic Republic of Pakistan is supposed to be guardian of all religious entities. This is what Islam has taught us. So, please get over this paranoid behaviour of loving secularism. The antidote of current religious extremism (a gift of secular western invasion of Afghanistan against Communist Russia) doesn’t lie in secularism, but in fact in a Muslim state that caters to aspirations of muslims and cares & respects the minority religions.

I’m no historian and perhaps have no right to comment – but I’ve recently learned that Pakistan was simply the Dominion of Pakistan from 1947 to 1956 – it was only 9 years after the country was born that the government decided to change its name to ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’!

What does that imply about the supposed creation of Pakistan simply as a Muslim land, period?

You say: 1. Main issue is that 71 yrs old Jinnah, with little knowledge of Urdu, had known 29 years old Azad?

My response: No one has claimed that Jinnah knew Azad – but it would not be surprising if he had heard of him as Azad’s father, Tilok Chand Mahroom was a well known poet and na’at khwan, to whom students would come to learn Arabic.

You say: 2. He, the constitutionalist, forced this as “national” anthem without approval of assembly (while the national flag received this approval in assembly)?

My response: Perhaps it was not an ‘official’ anthem, but just a tarana approved to be broadcast on Radio Pakistan.

You say: 3. During entire one year of Jinnah’s post 1947 life (ending in 1948), the national anthem was never captured anywhere in records.

My response: I’ll quote Zaheda Hina here, who points out that Mr Jinnah’s Aug 11, 1947 speech was nearly censored during his lifetime (as Zamir Niazi has recorded in ‘Press in Chains’). Had those people succeeded, there would be people now saying that he never made that speech.
Just because there are no official records does not prove anything – well known and well respected figures like I.A. Rehman, Dr Mubashir Hasan and Zaheer Kidvai (see Zakintosh’s comment on this blog) remember hearing this tarana on Radio Pakistan, as do others.

The Azad anthem is one that I heard as a child in 1948 … tho I could only recall the first three lines until I saw this piece. I think the singers were from Radio Pak’s team. which is where it was played. It was removed from broadcast fairly soon and, after a while, we only had the current anthem of Hafeez saahab put in.

The anthem we now have – though we often joke about it being too Persian with one little Hindi word in it – was in the kind of Urdu that most educated houses spoke. I recall having heard once from from Nakhshab saahab that it was in Persian because Iran’s Shahinshah was to be gifted the first copy … but that was Nakhshab saahab!

I also see some comments as: “this one sounds better than the one we have, and is in simple urdu.”

My dear countrymen, Urdu is a child of Farsi and Arabic. We SHOULD be able to understand the words which Urdu has inherited from its parent languages.

Lastly, for those who have any intellect and like to think about things, please think about the following:

The above Jagan Nath version of the tarana (which I do not believe to ever have been our national anthem anyway) talks about a certain point in time, i.e that particular day and the feelings of the Muslims on that day.

The REAL national anthem we have, is more generic and not time specific.

Anyway, most important is that we do some research and research does not mean visiting blogs and simply leaving comments and accepting what people say. Please read the article from The Daily Jang, which I have pasted a link for, above.

Thank you for our comment. Please see my note in response to Aqeel Abbas Jafri’s comment on this blog.

The point is that a beautiful poem was written for Pakistan on the eve of Independence, at the behest of Mr Jinnah says the poet who happened to be a Hindu.

Even if that cannot be proved, why discard Azad’s tarana? There are many other songs that are considered to be national songs (not official anthems) like Sohni Dharti, or Jivey Pakistan. Why not add Azad’s poem to that repertoire?

The importance of discussing Jagannath Azad’s tarana is not to take away from the beauty of Hafeez Jallandari’s poem but to re-introduce a song that was written by a Lahore-based poet who happened to be a Hindu, and who wrote it at Mr Jinnah’s behest (conveyed not directly or officially, but through a colleague at Radio Pakistan). There are many national songs we love and own – Sohni Dharti, Jiway Pakistan, etc. It would be nice if Azad’s tarana was added to that list.. No one is advocating that the present national anthem in all its glory be replaced by Azad’s poem. Azad till his dying day advocated peace and friendship between India and Pakistan. Read Zaheda HIna’s account (posted on this blog) of his contributions to Urdu literature and the pain of separation when he left Lahore. He is also a foremost authority on Allama Iqbal.

Thank you for sharing the complete text of our first national anthem. When I was writing the national anthem section of my website “Pakistanpaedia”, I could have access to just the opening verses.
It is sad that almost most of us do not know the history of our own national anthem.

Jagan Nath Azad did not write any official national anthem of Pakistan nor was he ever asked, directly or indirectly, by Quaid-i-Azam to do so. This is what the Pakistani researcher Aqeel Abbas Jafri has shown – convincingly, it seems – in his forthcoming book from which excerpts were published in the Urdu newspaper Express (Page 20 of the Sunday Express Section) on August 15, 2010.

It seems that the poet Jagan Nath Azad (1918-2004) only claimed that the first “tarana” (anthem) broadcast from radio on the night of August 14-15, 1947 was penned by him. While even this claim doesn’t seem to be true, in the video recording of a 1993 event where Azad is making this claim, he never says that the said anthem was the official anthem of the country.

There is no evidence supporting the sensational story in which Azad is dramatically called to Lahore Radio Station a few days before independence and asked to write the official national anthem because Quaid-i-Azam wants it to be written by a Hindu, and then the anthem remains official untill the Quaid’s death.

This version was circulated by the award-winning Indian journalist Luv Puri about a month after the death of Azad, with quotations from an alleged interview with the dead poet. Now Jafri has shown with the help of primary sources that Pakistan did not have a national anthem at the time of independence (an additional piece of evidence is an announcement, published in the lifetime of Quaid himself, promising a reward for whoever would write the national anthem of Pakistan).

Details can be seen in the above-mentioned article or in the forthcoming book of Jafri (the title has not been announced yet). Can we at least expect Wikipedia to now stop presenting the unsubstantiated account of Luv Puri as a fact, and the allegedly Pakistani writers and bloggers who promoted the same to at least publish a correction?
Posted by Khurram Ali Shafique at 3:12 AM
Labels: History, Literature etc

Just for the record, Jagannath Azad never claimed that he was ‘dramatically called to the Radio Station’, or that he met Mr Jinnah personally. All that he said was that he was conveyed a message, apparently from Mr Jinnah, to pen this tarana within a few days, which he did, and that it was played on Radio Pakistan on Aug 14, 1947, and for several months after that.

He mentioned this incident in his book ‘Ankhian TarastiaN HaiN‘ (1981) – Jagannath Azad referred to this incident, about how he came to write this tarana, in several other interviews and on his many visits to Pakistan. No one took it up or contradicted it then.

Zaheda Hina quotes the incident in her obituary of Azad mentioning the tarana in Express, August, 2004, uploaded on this blog in Sept 2009. She tells me that you called her a couple of days ago, expressing your ignorance about her article and asking for a copy. [An aside for those who may be interested: the Maulana Salahuddin whom Azad refers to, quoted by Zaheda Hina, was the maternal grandfather of Asma and Hina Jillani].

It is indeed unfortunate there is no record of the tarana. However, the fact remains that some people who were around at the time do remember hearing in 1947 on Radio Pakistan – people of integrity like I.A. Rehman (who came to Pakistan in Nov 1947 and says Radio Pakistan played it for quite some time), Dr Mubashir Hasan, and Zaheer Kidvai (see his query on his blog, May 2005). In the absence of a record, it’s Azad’s word and their’s, against anyone else’s.

I spoke to Zaheda Hina today. Having known Azad closely, she says, “There are people you know are truthful. Jagannath Azad was not a liar. If he says he wrote this tarana for Pakistan, at the behest of Mr Jinnah, I believe him. If there are people who choose not to believe him because there is no ‘evidence’, then that is their choice.”

The point is that a beautiful poem was written for Pakistan on the eve of Independence, at the behest of Mr Jinnah says the poet who happened to be a Hindu.

Even if that cannot be proved, why discard Azad’s tarana? There are many other songs that are considered to be national songs (not official anthems) like Sohni Dharti, or Jivey Pakistan. Why not add Azad’s poem to that repertoire?

‘Concrete proof’ is not the only source of information for researchers. You are welcome to read my comments above addressing this matter — that is if you care to keep an open mind about the issue. Otherwise, you are welcome to your views.

Dr Mehmood suggests that while there is a possibility that Azad might have written a national (milli) song which was broadcast by Radio Pakistan after 1947, however, there is no evidence of Azad’s meeting with Jinnah nor of the claim that he wrote a national anthem for Pakistan which was approved by Jinnah and which was broadcast by Radio Pakistan as the new country’s national anthem.

Thanks for all your positive efforts in this connection. I am surprised why no one woke up during my father’s (Late Prof. Jagan Nath Azad) lifetime to oppose the fact that the first Tarana was never penned by him?? At the event of Jashen-e-Qateel in Dubai in 1992/1993 – my father himself made a claim of this Tarana. I am sure you have seen this video! Congratulations to you for your efforts in this positive direction.

I am sure not so sure if the tarana as mentioned is complete. In the book “Jagan Nath Azad – Hayat aur Adbi Khalaat” by Khaliq Anjum Saheb, he has mentioned “Iss tarane ke kutch band hain” and he has mentioned the above lines in his book. So from this it is not clear whether this is the complete tarana or ‘kutch band’!!!! Is there any way to confirm this please.

With my above note I am in NO WAY CONTRADICTING that the Tarana was not penned by Late Prof. Jagan Nath Azad. My only query stands whether the above lines are of the complete tarana or no??

Beena, I have been fortunate to have grown up in Kashmir, Srinagar where Jagannath Azad used to visit our home as a friend of my father’s. The whole group of friends, which also included Balraj Puri, used to gather at different friends’ places to share his poetry. A few times as a kid I heard my father mention about his being an author of the first Pakistani National Anthem. And all he used to do was acknowledge the great feat with a modest smile and a twinkle in his eyes.

[…] One of the most amazing is her own blog entry about Pakistan’s first anthem. Founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah had asked Poet Jagannath Azad to write it. https://beenasarwar.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/jagan-nath-azads-pakistan-tarana/ […]

[…] is a sample of the kind of articles she has been flagging: One of the most amazing is her own blog entry about Pakistan’s first anthem. Founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah had asked Poet Jagannath […]

IT IS TRUE THAT FOUNDER OF PK M A JINNAH ASK MR J N AZAD A YOUNG MAN TO WROTE A BUITIFULL ANTHUM FOR PAKISTAN IN URDU HE WROTE AND SUBMITTED TO JINNAH AND URDU ANTHUM PLAYING IN BROADCAST STATIONSOF BOTH PARTS OF PK WEST AND EAST PAKISTAN MA JINNAH MOST OF COLEAGE WERE BENGALIES AND AFTER THE DEATH OF MA JINNAH BENGALIES CHANG THE URDU ANTHUM WITH PURE PERSIANE ONE THIS IS THE REAL STORY

[…] One of the most amazing is her own blog entry about Pakistan’s first anthem. Founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah had asked Poet Jagannath Azad to write it. https://beenasarwar.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/jagan-nath-azads-pakistan-tarana/ […]

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